Santa Rosa platform officially sets sail into stores

Intel has formally announced its new Centrino platform, previously codenamed Santa Rosa.

A new business-orientated Centrino Pro sub-brand sits alongside the existing Centrino Duo strand. The new platform features Kedron, the draft 802.11n-spec wireless adapter announced in January , and is based around Intel's 965GM chipset.

The other crucial change is that the Core 2 Duo chips used have faster front-side bus speeds (800MHz up from 667MHz). At a Rock-organised and largely unrevealing NDA briefing last week with Intel's Chris Hogg, Tech.co.uk journo Jeremy Laird was told that the new chips were two times faster than their predecessor. When quizzed, Hogg eventually coughed up the data that showed the compared chip was the ageing Pentium M, not the older Core chip.

The platform will bring even better battery life and connectivity options. A new Flash-memory technology called TurboMemory (previously codenamed Robson) will allow quicker booting of often used applications. As for the Pro part of the name, laptops featuring the new tech will boast Intel's Active Management Technology also seen in its business-orientated vPro desktops. It's designed for businesses to manage and solve problems remotely.

Robson technology may be included in the flash-based MacBooks that Apple is rumoured to be working on, as we reported on 24 April . The most recent predictions reported by Reuters state that Apple will announce a flash-based MacBook in the "second half of 2007".

Both Centrino ranges also have new butterfly-less logos. If you saw our CES coverage in January , you'll have got a sniff of what they were going to look like. We've already seen specimens from Rock and Asus and will be posting more info as the companies release official specs throughout the day.